Category Archives: Featured Articles

Oct 4 2010

A Catch-up July to October 2010

Wow! Its been a while since I blogged and so much has happened.
Is it because I haven’t had enough time or simply an attack of writers block?
Its probably a combination of the latter.

OK, here’s a quick catch-up
July heralded the 21st Bike Ride from Birmingham to London, this year raising funds for Wellchild. It was great to see the ‘sea of yellow’ again. NB I created this phrase to represent the teams of riders all in Hi-res yellow vests, getting together to cycle 130miles for a children’s charity. See more at: http://www.charitybikeride.com

August was fun with a trip to sunny Cyprus and meeting a couple of people in our hotel who simply smiled everyday. The two receptionist would greet us for breakfast and dinner and always smile so geniunely.  They got me thinking about why we don’t smile enough in our daily lives and if we do, is it viewed as suspicious? My conclusion is that there is lots to smile about, the fact that we breath, experience people and marvel at creation. However, our survialist stance makes it hard to find time to contemplate. The latter word has to be the strongest argument for taking time out.

By the end of August we managed to put together an entry for this year’s Sikhnet Film Festival – in my view one of the best festivals to encourage knowledge through creativity. The film produced explores the issue of need to contemplate through a poem written by both Jasdeep Hari Bhajan Singh Khalsa and Onkardeep Singh Khalsa, from their book Spirtual Poetry, A Disciples Journey, published by LuLu.com.
I’m also currently working on their audio book with proceeds of the sale going to a charity in Africa.

September just rushed run by.
On a sporting front it was nice to meet the cyclist’s from July’s charity ride again as I helped to drive a reunion picnic. We met at the Annual Skyride in London. NB Last year there was a staggering 64,000 riders allowed to freewheel the streets of London. This year the numbers soared to an incredible 85,000 !!!

In business I was exposed to a disappointment from an individual who worked for me and failed to understand the importance of ‘duty of care’ when made redundant. He failed to view the the big impact on the people he left behind and the risk that he may have taken advantage of the good nature of others. I felt exploited and all that remains is a bad taste in my mouth especially as I feel that you should try and trust in others and help them if their calls for help appear geninue. This is not to imply that you expect trust in return but common decency would drive you conclude that people should recepriocate. For example, on a video assignment, a project that with editing time estimated by the individual to take three more weeks, after he left it was completed within 5 days!

October has now dawned and over the first weekend we saw the incredible opening of the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games – a chance for India to shine. It glorified and communicated aspects of India yet missed an opportunity to communicate a greater heritage and deeper history. The way they showed the yoga experience was illuminating. Good Luck to all the organisers and participants.

I hope the next blog entry won’t be in 3 months time, i.e: That I will have time and energy to post more views and news!
BTW At the end of September, the Sikhwithin i-phone App was released and on 1st October the Smooth Groovers i-phone App:
was released – enjoy!

Jun 22 2010

Imaginative economics can save humanity

Today the UK is expecting one of the harshest Budget’s for 30 years. As per normal the UK press manage to capture leaks, hints and tips or are they leaks (!) of what we are to expect.

The current UK coalition government may claim that the deficit is a result of the past regime.
The past regime quite rightly suggest that it is a global issue.

Lets just take a look at the latter. From the outset it appears that freedom of banks to gamble has now lead to the public paying the price.

I look at the economy from a different perspective. Although capitalism can fuel opportunities it has a dark side, one of greed and as Wall Street the movie put it, ‘Greed is good’ and ‘Lunch is for wimps’!

The model to squeeze the worker to support the power of the multinational is based on personal survival.
i.e: The beast wants more and if you feed it, you too can eat some of the pie and live.

We seemed to have missed something. Economics based on helping each other.
We are bred to be immune to the suffering of others. We all know people are dying of malnutrition.
We and I am guilty if this this, will buy the latest gadget but simply express shock when we realise how little the component assembler is being paid or treated. We hope that the manufacturer will influence the factory but on many occasions they don’t or can’t get close enough to the internal abuse. By then it can be too late. In the same way people will rush to buy cheap cloths and will forget that child labour made in a backdrop of underground/Mafia, ungoverned operations and non-policed middle men. Corporate responsibility is played a simple lip service to as it is left to unaudited processes.

The following list shows some of the reasons for poverty. Why can’t our politicians and economists develop strategies that involve global sharing initiative initiatives to tackle each and more of them?

  • State discrimination corruption and abuse of public power.
  • Lack of social integration. Competition instead of cooperation.
  • Crime.
  • Substance abuse
  • Procrastination
  • Climate or environmental factors and abuse of the dumping of recycling waste.
  • Historical factors, e.g: with origins from imperialism and colonialism.
  • Population growth
  • War, genocide and bullying
  • Lack of education and skill development
  • Excessive materialism

If we based an economy on developing other nations then collectively we will benefit. If we can see that they (for example, a developing nation) need the building of infrastructure, then together we can trade and harmonise the world. Economics driven on equality not on class, caste or race distinction. One way to expose and help on a community level is to twin schools, enterprises, medical support and food provision.

The obsession with squeezing people in richer countries could impact development projects as they could claim they have less of their own money to share with others. Instead, we should set-up global development funds for those living in richer countries to invest in.

We need economists with imagination not politicians claiming and repeating the policies of the past will work. We all know they don’t and we let them (the politicians) continue on a decade-on-decade of the cycle of boom and bust – yet for some people its doom and dust for all of their lives…

Jun 16 2010

Waving the Flag for England

It’ has been a while since I blogged. The reason? I guess its because I’ve been in deep thought about a number of issues.
Firstly, the economic climate is full of uncertainty and if like me you run a business, it yields a series subtle stress…! Secondly, as the summer kicks in, you get to experience change… derived from the climate, mood and the environment. Combine all this with flag-waving mania (just look at the state of some of the cars roaming around with countless England flags clipped onto their windows) induced by the World Cup soccer championships and my birthday – often a time to reminisce about your life and consider how things have changed.

When I grew up the national flag and St George’s flag were both synonymous with racism. They had both been hijacked by the racist party – the national front (note the lower case!).  Are things any different now?

On Saturday 12th June 2010 I was invited to join a group of friends to watch England’s first world-cup match against the USA. The event was televised on 4 screens, including a large projection wall display. We all decided to congregate at the Indian Gymkhana, first established in 1916. Click here for a full history of its inception.

Back to the match. The majority of those watching the match were of Indian decent – Representatives from all of Indian’s wide and varied community were present. Even my next door neighbour with his entire family attended.

Interestingly, there was one thing they all had in common. 80% wore an England football shirt and the atmosphere was electrified by the chants of ‘Come on England’!

I managed to catch some of the excitement, especially just after the first and only goal that was scored: See below:

[quicktime]http://www.saviarora.com/Videos/12thJune2010EnglandVsUSA.mov[/quicktime]

I found this new loyalty to the English flag amazing on many levels.

  • Was this a demonstration that Norman Tebbit’s rules had been broken?
  • Did Enoch Powell’s  rivers of blood speech now mean nothing as people felt comfortable with accepting England as their true home?

My mind tells me that we have a further journey to travel – for the general community to accept people from different backgrounds, many who have fathers and mothers that struggled since the 1950s to be accepted as equals and who laid the foundations for today’s youth and generally more comfortable life style.

Why do I still feel some cynicism regarding the flag ? Firstly, there is no acceptance from the media at large to acknowledge that the UK is varied in its cultural make-up. TV, radio and the majority of featured celebrities is orientated towards a sub-culture and the pretence that the average viewer or listener is from a ‘white’ background. What also does not help are shows like Britain’s Got Talent displaying a weekly / seasonal undertone of inequality and class distinction. The BBC are quick to chop the BBC Asian Network (Why call it Asian!) yet commitment to Radio 3 continues. Remember too that ‘ethnic’ programming is still late into the night!

Maybe, I was shocked due to my personal experiences of being bullied on race grounds at school. Maybe, I consider that today’s loyalty to the flag displayed by others is based on convenience. NB We do have a lot to the Thank the UK for.
Or, maybe I should be more optimistic that ‘times are a changing’ ?